Bordeaux Or Parisian

Make a mixture as for pound-cakes, leaving out the fruit, peel, and spices; bake in a round or oval hoop. When baked and cold, cut into slices J in. thick; spread each slice with jam or marmalade. The outside of the cake may be cut round, or fluted to form a star; and the centre of the cake is occasionally cut out to about 1 1/2 in. from the edge, leaving the bottom slice whole: this may be tilled with preserved wet or dry fruits, creams, or a trifle. The top is ornamented with piping, wet or dry fruits, and peels, or piped with jam and icing.

Pound

The following table gives the ingredients necessary for rich pound-, Twelfth-, or bride-cakes of different prices: -

* Nutmegs, mace, and cinnamon, of each equal parts, in powder.

These proportions allow for the cake being iced. If more sugar is preferred, it may be the same as the butter; less is used that the cake may be light, and to allow for the sweet fruit. Double the quantity of almonds may be used. To make: warm a smooth pan, large enough for the mixture; put in the butter, and reduce it to a fine cream, by working it about the pan with your hand. In summer the pan need not be warmed; but in winter keep the mixture as warm as possible, without oiling the butter. Add the sugar and mix it well with the butter, until it becomes white and feels light in the hand. Break in 2 or 3 eggs at a time, and work the mixture well before more is added. Continue doing this until all are used and it becomes light; then add the spirit, currants, peel, spice, and almonds, most of the almonds being previously cut in thin slices, and the peel into small thin strips and bits. When these are incorporated, mix in the flour lightly; put it in a hoop with paper over the bottom and round the sides, and place on a baking-plate. Large cakes require 3 or 4 pieces of stiff paper round the sides; and if the cake is very large, a pipe or funnel, made either of stiff paper or tin, and well buttered, should be put in the centre, and the mixture placed round it; this is to allow the middle of the cake to be well baked, otherwise the edge would be burnt 2 or 3 in. deep before it could be properly done.

Place the tin plates containing the cake on another, the surface of which is covered 1 or 2 in. thick with sawdust or fine ashes to protect the bottom. Bake it in an oven at a moderate heat. The time required to bake it will depend on the state of the oven and the size of the cake. A guinea cake in an oven of a proper heat will take 4 to 5 hours. When the cake is cold, proceed to ice it. Wedding-cakes have generally, first, a coating on the top of almond icing; when this is dry, the sides and top are covered with royal or white icing. Fix on gum paste or other ornaments whilst it is wet; and when dry, ornament with pipiug. orange-blossoms, ribbon, etc.; the surface and sides are often covered with small knobs of white sugar candy whilst the icing is wet. Twelfth-cakes are iced with white or coloured icing, and decorated with gum paste, plaster ornaments, piping-paste, rings, knots, and fancy papers, etc, and piped.